Democrats made presidential process a joke

April 28, 2008|By Sidney Shapiro

The 2008 election is unfolding like a Shakespearean or Greek tragedy. It has all the elements of drama, humor, deception, pathos, comedy, tragedy, highs and lows, back-stabbing and almost every element of human behavior encompassing good or bad.

The bottom line is that our election process is broken and in need of major repair. To start with, it is too long and complicated. You have a garbled mixture of primaries and caucuses which many times are complicated and unwieldy.

All primaries should start in February and end in May, rotating every year in different areas of the country. You no longer give preference to states such as New Hampshire and Iowa. You also eliminate the caucus structure as useless and non-performing.

Also, all campaigns would be limited to raising or providing a mandated, limited campaign fund amount. All campaigns would have the same time frames and the same restricted dollars to spend. No candidate would be allowed to raise more money than anyone else.

In essence, everyone starts and finishes on an even playing field. You end up with a more compact, shorter time frame and a cleaner, proactive result. Consideration should be given to moving the succession process from Jan. 20 of the following year to the end of December of the same election year. Also, the Electoral College should be abolished, to be replaced by the winner to be elected by the majority of the popular vote cast.

If we take a look at the current campaign, we can see why these proposals would rectify all the bad situations we are now living with. Candidates started their campaigns almost two years ago and many fine individuals dropped out because they couldn't raise the cash needed to compete in this struggle.

With their enormous financial clout, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama emerged as the top seeds in this race. Clogging up the system were the battles over dates for the individual primaries. Three states with minuscule populations rushed to protect their previous prominence by claiming and securing the earliest primary dates. Those states were New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina.

The larger and more important states of Florida and Michigan, in outright defiance of the national committee, moved up and held earlier primaries. No candidate in lock step with the Democratic National Committee campaigned in these states in order to punish Florida and Michigan for their insubordination.

In Florida, the controlling Republican legislature was more than happy to put the complicit Democratic leadership in this hole by voting to change the primary date. The stupidity of all individuals in this matter is overwhelming. It touches all factions starting with Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean who, with his committee, set out to show they were all- powerful. Unfortunately, they were stupid and wrong and are now struggling to find a way out of this mess.

Also stupid were the Democratic candidates who went along and supported this situation. Now you have hell breaking loose as factions for and against attempt to rectify this matter. The damage has been done. Only if the corrective action I have proposed is taken, will it prevent another future election fiasco.